


Fever 'Til You Sizzle (what a lovely way to burn)

by nonisland



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Crying During Sex, Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, FE3H Kinkmeme, First Time, Marathon Sex, Overstimulation, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Sex Pollen, Sexually Explicit Character Study, ambiguously friends to lovers or friends to friends-with-benefits take your pick, brief appearances by Annette and Ashe, hurt/comfort elements, sylvain: sex pollen? sure‚ yeah‚ that'll be regular. (narrator: it was not regular.)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:41:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25369270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: Sylvain has an ill-advised accidental encounter with a medicinal plant, and Mercedes offers to minimize the negative effects. (Yes, this ficisexactly what you think it is.)
Relationships: Sylvain Jose Gautier/Mercedes von Martritz
Comments: 15
Kudos: 79
Collections: FE3H Kink Meme





	Fever 'Til You Sizzle (what a lovely way to burn)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**3houseskinkmeme**](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/) [prompt](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/476.html?thread=1412828) “Sylvain is messing around in the greenhouse and accidentally gets a face full of sex pollen. (Why is there a fuck flower in the greenhouse? I don't give a fuck, but it's there.) Mercedes offers to help him fuck out the pollen. I'm okay with pre established relationship or no relationship yet. Pre or post skip. Any position, anyone on top. Just give me mercedes helping sylvain after getting sex pollen'd.”
> 
> Extreme thanks to Scott, who goes here, and Ember, who doesn’t, for reading this through for me and refusing to let me give up at the 3K mark, or the 6K mark, or after I’d written it but before I could post it. Title from Peggy Lee’s “Fever.”
> 
> * * *

Sylvain finally finds Mercedes in the kitchen with Annette and Ashe. Plates of some kind of frosted cakes surround them, but he doesn’t spare too long a look. The itching across his face and hands has dulled into heat that feels like sunburn.

“Mercedes! Just the person I’ve been hoping to find.”

“Sure, sure,” Mercedes says, with that sweet dismissiveness that only she can get away with, but then she looks up and almost drops the bowl of frosting. “Are you all right?”

“You look awful!” Annette blurts, and then claps a hand over her mouth.

Ashe nods. “You don’t look well at all.”

“Thanks,” Sylvain says. He’s not surprised—he’d expect to be flushed with the heat spreading under his skin like ink in water—but hey, he has to keep up appearances. Still. “I think I might be allergic to one of the flowers in the greenhouse?”

The three of them look at each other. “You were in the greenhouse?” Annette asks skeptically.

“What did Professor Manuela say?” Ashe asks.

“Can’t find her,” Sylvain says with a shrug. “The infirmary is empty, so I figured if anyone could help me it’d be you, Mercedes. Please, tell me your magic hands”—Annette and Ashe both go pink—“have some kind of solution for this.”

Mercedes hands the bowl over to Annette. “I can try,” she says, walking in a slow circle around Sylvain. “What is it exactly that’s wrong?”

“Well, I needed to get some flowers—”

“ _Another_ angry girl?” she asks, disappointed.

Sylvain rubs the back of his neck, and then stops with his hand still there. He digs his fingers into the tight muscle where neck meets shoulder, his head tipping back, and then recalls himself. “Yeah, I, uh—you know, it’s a long story. Anyway, I needed to get some flowers, and everything’s dead outside, so I figured maybe I’d just…borrow a few.”

“Mm-hm.” Mercedes takes his hand and presses two of her fingers to his wrist. “Well, your heart’s a little fast, but it seems strong enough. Then what happened?”

“I barely touched the damn—sorry—the thing,” Sylvain says, indignant. The mess isn’t all of why he doesn’t garden, but it’s a good reason to give other people. “It just…exploded all over me.”

“Oh _no_ ,” Annette squeaks. The bowl slips out of her hands and clatters onto the counter.

Mercedes’s fingers tighten on Sylvain’s wrist for just a second. “What did the flower look like?” she asks.

Sylvain tries to think. It looked like a very fancy flower, but he doesn’t think that’s the answer she’s looking for. “Dark purple, long petals. They got reddish toward the middle.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Ashe says.

“Sylvain,” Mercedes says, all steel and no sweetness, “did you _give_ this flower to the girl you were apologizing to?”

Poison, probably. That’s not good. “No way,” Sylvain says. “Girls don’t like flowers that cover them in sticky pollen, girls like flowers that smell nice and sit quietly in vases. Take notes,” he adds to Ashe, and/or Annette if she wants to know. “Or at least they’re supposed to—she didn’t like the ones I gave her, either.”

“Oh, thank the Goddess,” Mercedes says. She lets his hand go.

“If I’m going to die,” Sylvain says, “I can think of a last request…”

Annette says, “You’re not going to die!”

“It’s going to be awfully unpleasant for a bit, though,” Mercedes says. She rises onto her toes, squinting at his face. “I don’t _see_ any of the pollen…”

“I washed it off,” Sylvain says. “Sticky? Red? I had plans for the night that involved looking my best, after all, but alas.”

Mercedes sighs. “But you didn’t wash it off in time.”

“What _is_ it?” he asks.

“It’s an Almyran night lily,” Mercedes says.

Definitely poison.

“The professor _told_ us,” Ashe says, wide-eyed. “At least twice!”

“I don’t garden,” Sylvain points out. “Why would the professor bother telling me? I haven’t been in the greenhouse all year. Why is there poison in the greenhouse without a warning, anyway?”

“Oh, it’s not poison,” Annette says.

Ashe sidles toward the door. “I’m just going to…uh…see if I can find Professor Manuela,” he says, a little higher than usual. “I’ll check her room. Maybe she’s gone to bed already.”

She’s probably drunk, not that Sylvain is going to tell Ashe that.

“It’s an aphrodisiac,” Mercedes says as soon as Ashe has gotten himself a little distance away.

Sylvain blinks. Then he blinks again. He’d ask Mercedes to repeat herself, but Ashe wouldn’t have fled without a reason. “Why are there _aphrodisiacs_ in the greenhouse, with or without a warning?”

“The seed pods are medicinal,” Annette says, blushing fiercely but refusing to give any ground. “But the flowers have to…bloom, first. Ashe was right, the professor warned us all! At least _three_ times.” She sighs. “Maybe four. ‘Don’t touch the flowers, or they’ll burst open and,’ well. Um.”

“Annie, why don’t you go help Ashe look for Professor Manuela?” Mercedes asks gently. “And let our professor know that Sylvain won’t be in class tomorrow.”

Annette draws a deep breath to protest, then lets it out, defeated. “All right.”

“That doesn’t sound too unpleasant,” Sylvain says warily. “Or does the burning feeling get worse?”

“Oh _dear_ ,” Mercedes says, shoulders drooping. “You don’t have much time left, if it’s already burning. No, that isn’t the problem, it’s just…well…mostly the chafing, really.”

Sylvain glances down at the still-more-or-less-flat front of his trousers. “Ah.”

“It would be easier if you had a partner,” she says with a sigh. “Something about the reaction goes more quickly if there’s someone else there, but it sounds like you don’t have anyone at the moment.”

It is regrettably true that there isn’t a single woman of Sylvain’s acquaintance whose mercy he can throw himself on. Or man, for that matter—Felix would probably stab him for asking and Dimitri would suffer through it because he thought it was his duty as Sylvain’s prince, and neither of those is acceptable. Ingrid, meanwhile, would _absolutely_ punch him.

Mercedes is studying him, soft indigo eyes unusually sharp on his. “I can help, if you’d like,” she says after a moment, with a sweet smile. That sharpness fades, or maybe he’d just imagined it.

“What,” Sylvain says.

“I don’t mind, just this once,” Mercedes says, “as long as you don’t stop talking to me for helping you out. You’re going to be very unhappy otherwise, and I hate to think of you going through that alone.”

Sylvain closes his mouth. “Sure,” he says. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Knowing how you feel about the idea of having Crest babies, I’m guessing you take regular doses of seedbane,” she says, and oh, there it is, Sylvain should tell her right now that he’s changed his mind. She knows an awful lot about him. “But even if you don’t, or if it wears off under the effects of the pollen, I drink moon tea daily, so there’s no risk of you getting me pregnant.”

He’s still not sure how they got here. Most of the time, he can keep up in conversations better than this, but something about Mercedes throws him off balance—something like going full-tilt at a training dummy that hadn’t been properly anchored into the ground. “That’s good,” he says. “I wouldn’t like to think what the professor would have to say if I did. Or”—he shudders, not entirely for show—“ _Seteth_.”

Mercedes giggles. It’s such a bright, warm sound that Sylvain still can’t wrap his head around the fact that she’s agreed to have sex with him because Garreg Mach Monastery keeps _fuck flowers_ in its _student-tended greenhouse_. His cock, however, is starting to get on board with the plan.

“Then we’re all set,” she says. “Your room is at the end of the nobles’ hall, isn’t it?”

Sylvain thinks about smuggling her back down the hallway again in the morning and winces. On the other hand, nobody would ever suspect what she was actually doing up there. At least he keeps his room clean. “Right.”

“I’ll just get a nightgown.”

“You can’t—” he calls after her as she leaves, but she doesn’t turn back. Well, it looks like they’re going to test the limits of what people won’t believe Mercedes von Martritz will stoop to.

True to her word, Mercedes arrives at his door only a minute after he’s gotten there himself. She’s carrying a small satchel with two books sticking out of it, which is a surprisingly good plan. Sylvain tries to remember if he’s ever seen her leaving anyone else’s room at a suspicious hour of the morning with a satchel, but can’t think of anything. He’s a little distracted, to be fair—restless and overheated. It’s not obvious quite yet what’s wrong with him, but he’s pretty sure it will be soon.

Mercedes puts the satchel down. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Sylvain says with a breezy smile. “So I was thinking, how about we get you warmed up a little first, and then take it from there?”

She looks at him, almost calm except that she’s nibbling a little on her lower lip. He watches the color rush in when her teeth release it and thinks, _yes_. “All right,” she says, and takes off her shawl.

Sylvain is pretty sure his eyes must be popping half-out of his head. He’d had an impression that she was curvy, but she wears that plain shawl around the Academy and heavy robes into battle. “Mercedes, wow,” he says faintly, staring at the heavy swell of her breasts against her uniform shirt. The middle button is barely holding on. He’s gone from vaguely horny to most of the way hard so fast he’s almost dizzy with it. “Wow.”

“Thank you,” she says calmly. There’s a faint blush high on her cheeks, but nothing more.

With more effort than he’s proud of, Sylvain stops himself from saying it a third time and concentrates on getting himself out of his jacket. His hands are shaking a little, enough that once he gets down to his shirt the buttons are difficult to manage.

Mercedes, when he looks up, has unfastened her jabot and is unbuttoning her shirt with neat, careful motions. Her breastband is plain white with nothing more than a silky white ribbon by way of trim, which is a _crime_.

“You’re beautiful,” Sylvain says as she gets her shirt off. He’s maybe staring a little. There’s just—it’s so much skin, and it’s _Mercedes_ , who wanders around praying in loose shawls. It’s a lot to handle.

“Oh, Sylvain,” she says, working the straps down her arms with a motion of her shoulders that makes her breasts bounce and destroys most of his remaining ability to think. “You don’t need to give me the speech.”

That at least knocks some sense back into him. “It’s not a speech! I really appreciate, uh…” It’s not as if either of them don’t know what’s going on, but he still probably shouldn’t specifically mention appreciating other women to her right now. “What if I just stopped talking? That might be better.”

“It might be,” Mercedes says, so sweet it almost hides the sting.

The breastband drops away and Sylvain makes a strangled noise. Enough standing around like a fool—he crosses the few steps between them and bends to kiss her. Mercedes puts her hands on his shoulders right away, steadying herself as she rises to push into the kiss, and he lets his own hands settle on the bare skin of her waist.

She isn’t shy about it, which shouldn’t still be surprising him but somehow does. She tastes like spice cake, all sugar and heat—that must just be what she’d been baking when he found her, but it suits her, he thinks, licking into her mouth and swallowing the soft pleased sounds she makes. He eases one hand up her ribcage slowly until he reaches her breasts, warm and soft against his hands, and she hums quietly and arches her back. Her breast is a goddessdamn handful even for Sylvain, and his hands aren’t small.

His cock _aches_ where it’s still trapped in his trousers. He wants to rip the rest of his clothes off and fuck her from behind, or else let her ride him—either way, he desperately wants to get inside her right now.

He thinks about stable duty and mutilated corpses, and clears his throat. “Why don’t we move to the bed?” It’s a poor imitation of his regular voice, but maybe Mercedes won’t notice.

Mercedes gives him another one of those too-sharp looks and says, “All right.” She sits on the edge of the bed, half-naked with a flush spreading down her chest, and it takes everything Sylvain has to not just flip her skirt up over her head.

“Here, c’mon,” he says, still smiling, still trembling. He sits down next to her and tugs her gently down, rolls them both into the middle of the bed. “You still good?”

“I’m all right,” she says, stroking the side of her face. “Are _you_ all right?”

“I have a beautiful, brilliant, thoughtful woman in my bed,” Sylvain says, with a real smile this time. She can’t complain about that one when she walked right into it. “Of course I am.”

She frowns.

“I’m fine,” he says. “Really. Here, can I…” He strokes his thumb along the thin gap of skin between her skirt and her stockings, and Mercedes nods.

He _could_ just—no. No, he can’t, that’s the aphrodisiac talking.

He leans down and kisses her throat as he works a hand under her skirt, tracing patterns up her thigh. She smells like lavender, cool and clean.

“That’s nice,” Mercedes sighs, which is simultaneously exactly what he would have expected her to say and a blow to his ego. He gets his other hand back on her breast, which is just as lush as before, and rolls her nipple gently between his fingers. “Oh, but my breasts aren’t really that sensitive.”

Sylvain sits up and looks at her. “You’re kidding.”

“I was afraid you’d be disappointed,” she says. That’s an understatement. It’s just enormously unfair of the Goddess to have given her breasts like that and not made them fun for her. “It’s all right.”

“Can I, uh…” Her pale hair is tumbled all over his pillows, but she’s still Mercedes, and he’s not really sure how she’s going to feel if he says _eat you out_. “Do you like… Mercedes, you’re not a virgin, are you?”

The moon tea could mean she’s been fucking half the Academy every weekend, or it could mean she’s like Ingrid and takes it so that she’s not knocked out for days every moon with pain. He has to sit next to her in class tomorrow. He has to go into _battle_ with her. He’s screwed a lot of things up in his life, and this can’t be one of them.

Mercedes smiles. “You’re not the first person I’ve been with. It’s all right. What do you want to do?”

What he wants to do is have a better grip on the whole situation. Usually by now his lover would be making some kind of demands, and he’d be doing his best to please her to distraction. “Can I eat you out?” Sylvain asks, and tries not to blush.

“I’d like that,” she says, almost demure, but he _saw_ her breath catch and her eyes dilate.

Hah.

He lifts her skirt out of the way and manages not to sigh in disappointment that she’s wearing smallclothes. Of course she is. They both reach for the button at the same time, and then Mercedes is lifting her hips so he can work them out from under her.

Normally Sylvain would put them…somewhere, probably on his chair, but right now he just throws them vaguely off the bed. There was a little damp patch where the legs met, and he’s out of patience as she spreads her thighs and he settles on his stomach between them. He just wants to make her come so he can fuck her—he just _wants_.

The scent of her soap is fainter here. He smells salt and sex as he nuzzles along the groove where leg and body meet, determined to take it slow and make it good. One of Mercedes’s hands settles on the back of his head, combing lightly through his hair, and he says, “Yeah, go ahead.” She shivers as his lips brush against her skin and he takes pity on both of them and stops teasing.

She’s wet already, thank fuck, and her hand tightens a little in Sylvain’s hair as he strokes his tongue up along her folds. “Sorry,” she says, releasing him, and then gasps when he finds her clit.

“I told you it was okay,” Sylvain says, not moving his mouth away from her, and she says “ _oh_ ” a lot louder this time and then does put her hand back. He falls into a rhythm pretty easily after that, hips rocking against the bed as he licks and sucks and the salt-sour taste of her gets stronger, and it turns out Mercedes isn’t _that_ quiet. He doesn’t think he’s going to be able to make her scream, but she doesn’t try to hold back the noises she makes, and every time she gasps “that’s good” Sylvain thinks he’d do anything to get her to keep saying that.

His face is wet and her thighs are trembling where they’re pressed against his cheeks, and she _has_ to be getting close. He works a finger into her cunt and feels the muscles there clench around it, hot and slick and tight, and he comes in an unexpected rush, grinding helplessly against the mattress and still wearing his fucking clothes.

Mercedes says, “Sylvain?”

He hasn’t done this in _years_.

“Sylvain,” she says again. She’s let go of his hair. Her hand strokes gently down the back of his head and settles on his neck. “It’s all right.”

“You were close, right?” Sylvain asks, when he can string two words together again. “C’mon, I bet I can still get you there.”

After a brief hesitation, she says, “I don’t think I’ll take that bet.”

“Good choice,” he says. “I’m on it.” The cooling mess in his smallclothes is disgusting, but he is not taking them off until he’s managed to get her to come. He doesn’t mess around this time, just dives right back in, and after another minute or two Mercedes is squirming against his mouth, her hand twisting in his hair to pull him closer as her cunt flutters and squeezes around his finger again. _Fuck_ , he wants to get his cock in there, but he relaxes into the moment, working it for her until she moans and shudders under him.

“Mm,” she says, finding his shoulder with only a little fumbling and patting it. “Lovely. How are you feeling?” Her voice clears as she speaks, until she sounds almost normal for someone who is—Sylvain sits up and wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand—lying flushed and naked in his bed, legs parted, breasts rising and falling as she catches her breath.

He gets out of his smallclothes and trousers, grimacing at the mess. That’s not going to be a fun shared laundry day. His cock, half-hard again, springs up as he frees it. “Are you good to go again?”

Mercedes stretches and shifts experimentally. “I think so.” Then she props herself up on one elbow and takes a better look at him. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

“I’m fine,” Sylvain says, baffled. “I mean, I’m not usually—I usually last a little longer than that, okay, but you did say it was an aphrodisiac, so I’m going to blame it on that.”

“All right!” she says. “Let’s try it.”

“How do you feel about kissing?” he asks, since making out for a bit seems like a nicer way of getting the rest of the way hard again than just making her watch him jerk off, but he has no idea how she feels about the taste.

“Oh, I don’t mind at all.” She reaches for him and pulls him down next to her, all warm sleek skin and those breasts, and actually he doesn’t need to wait any longer, but he’s not going to change his mind. Mercedes really _doesn’t_ seem to mind the taste of herself in his mouth, her tongue pressing eagerly against his, and he has to take a second to just rest his face against her shoulder and pant for breath when his thigh slips between hers and he feels how wet she still is.

She makes a low pleased sound in the back of her throat, pushing back against him a little—he can feel her slick smearing against his leg, cooling once it’s away from the heat of her body—and says, “Are you ready yet?”

“Born ready,” Sylvain manages. His hands are shaking again when he guides his cock to her entrance, enough that he’s worried about missing and just jabbing her uncomfortably with it, but she reaches down to help him guide it in. He doesn’t even have time to feel exposed because she’s—fuck, she’s so tight, even though she just came—he asked, though, she _said_ she’d done this before, and when he gets his eyes open she doesn’t look like she’s in pain. Her lips are parted, her eyes half-closed.

They open, and her gaze focuses. “It’s okay,” she says, shifting her hips, and he sinks a little deeper without meaning to, and then pushes the rest of the way in and braces himself on his arms over her, fighting the urge to just keep moving.

“You’re _really_ tight,” he says, locking his elbows and concentrating on that instead of how good her cunt feels around him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’m not,” Mercedes says, frowning a little at him even as her thighs flex against his and her voice goes breathy. “It’s not uncomfortable. Do…you think it’s one of the effects of the night lily pollen? That it’s making you feel things more intensely?”

“It doesn’t hurt,” he repeats. Checking.

She shakes her head with a smile. “I feel just fine.”

“Right,” Sylvain says, and lets go. He’s aware he’s fucking her a little harder than he normally would when he’d just gotten inside her, but she doesn’t seem to mind—one particularly hard thrust gets a moan out of her, and he remembers he’d meant to do something other than roll on top of her and stick his cock in, even if she did encourage him. “Is this—fuck—is this going to do it for you?”

“Sort of,” she says. Her knuckles brush against his stomach as she gets a hand between them. “I like this, though.”

He kisses her again for that—it’s the least he can do—and her hand is caught between them, rocking against her every time he moves. He can’t tell if he’s helping or not, at first, but then she drags her mouth away from his and pants for breath, her other hand tightening on his shoulder, and yeah, he remembers that sound. Thank the Goddess he’d just come, though, because she’s slick and hot and perfect, and if he could do this all night he would.

He can’t, though, so the movement of Mercedes’s hand, the wet sounds as he pushes back into her, her little gasps as he kisses her jaw and throat—they’re all good, better than good, because she’s still gorgeous and she’s still _here_. Her cunt tightens and ripples around him, and he wants to lean back to watch her fingers at work just above where his cock disappears into her but he doesn’t want to stop, he wants to keep chasing this down, faster and harder and faster.

When she comes again—crying out this time, still not a scream but louder than she’s been yet—it’s a huge relief. Sylvain stops holding back, lets his hips rock urgently forward, and the sweet clench of her body goes on and on, drowning out anything else, until he comes too, and collapses onto her.

He should move.

“Ow,” Mercedes says, and Sylvain jumps back, wincing in guilt and wincing again at the friction on his softening cock as he pulls out of her. He must not have been subtle about the wince, because she says, “I’m all right! Just a little tender. Your legs are pretty strong.”

“Well, cavalry,” he says, flopping down next to her. “I use my thighs a lot. Sorry.”

“It was very good right until it got to be too much.” Her voice is dreamy. “And that was just at the very end. Don’t worry, I would have told you if I didn’t like it.”

Sylvain fights the urge to ask her how much she _had_ liked it. She came twice—he doesn’t think she’s the kind of girl to fake that—but maybe she’d still rather be back in the kitchen baking with Annette and Ashe. She’s been so calm about everything, and she’s not really getting that much out of this. He can’t _tell_. “I didn’t hurt you?”

“I’m just tender,” she says again, and rests her cheek against his shoulder. Her breath is warm on his skin, her breasts press against his arm, and he feels his cock twitch. Again.

He swallows. “So, this wasn’t how you planned to spend your evening, huh.”

“It’s been interesting.” Mercedes cuddles a little closer, her knee sliding over his, and, nope, he’s definitely starting to get hard again.

What the hell. Well—aphrodisiac flowers, apparently, but _still_. His balls are tender, his hips and thighs feel heavy with fatigue. And his cock is stiffening and lifting away from his leg at the soft drag of Mercedes’s skin against his. “Uh…Mercedes? How long did you say this lasts?”

“Hmm?” She sits up, giving him a very unhelpful eyeful of her breasts. He might be obsessed. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to look at her in the hallways without thinking about what she has under that shawl now. “Oh, dear.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain says, staring at the ceiling in the rather slim hopes that it will actually help. It’s a real shame neither of them knows any ice magic.

She fits herself against his side again. “I’m afraid it’ll probably be a while longer, even with me here.”

“So how does that work?” Botany is some kind of distraction from her warmth and her softness and the heavy scent of sex in the room, anyway.

“Skin-to-skin contact,” Mercedes says, and then yawns. “Oh! Sorry. It’s like…when you’ve rescued someone from freezing, you know? You get down to as few clothes as possible so you can share warmth more easily. I expect it’s something like that, even though I don’t know how it works. Claude might, but you probably don’t want to ask him.”

Sylvain absolutely does not want to ask Claude, even though Claude is fond enough of obscure chemicals that he probably has an answer. “So if I were on my own?”

“At least a day, probably.” She’s stroking her thumb idly against the inside of his forearm, which is doing nothing at all to convince his cock that it’s time for a rest. “Maybe longer. We looked it up after the professor warned us, but not in detail.”

“There really should be a sign,” Sylvain mutters, shifting his hips against the bed. “‘Don’t touch these flowers, you’ll end up unbearably horny.’”

“At least it was just you in the greenhouse,” Mercedes says. “How are you feeling?”

He rubs his face with his free hand, which has the advantage of covering it. “Like it’s not over yet.”

“Well, that’s all right.” She sits up and climbs over his leg, sitting back on her heels between his knees. “I’m here to help.”

“What—” Sylvain starts, and then the words die in his mouth as she leans down. Her breasts swing forward, round and heavy and he is _never ever going to be able to forget this_ , and then she actually wraps a hand around the base of his cock and lowers her mouth toward it. “Mercedes, you don’t have to—”

“I don’t mind,” she says firmly. “Just don’t choke me.”

“I’m not… I… Really, you don’t have to.”

She lets go and sits back, which he is only partly relieved about. Her brows are drawn together, a familiar concerned look he is probably also never going to see again without thinking about this. “Do you not want me to? I just thought it would be easy, since I’m not ready for you to do anything with me again.”

That makes him feel worse, not better. “I just…you’re not getting anything out of it.” He doesn’t know how to explain it.

“I care about you,” Mercedes says, painfully earnest. “I get to know I’m not leaving you alone.”

Which is the biggest crock of shit imaginable, but he’s running out of willpower here. She has to be able to see that he can’t even hold still while she watches him. He shouldn’t, but… “Okay, but just this once.”

“All right,” she says, and bends down again. Her hair spills over her shoulders, silken against his thighs and stomach, and he hisses through his teeth at the contrast between that and and the sure heat of her hand around his cock. She flicks her tongue lightly against the crown and he twists his hands in the sheets so he remembers not to touch her head. He doesn’t know what she meant by _don’t choke me_ and he doesn’t want to risk pulling her down too hard.

She’s _playing_ with him, or maybe just exploring, and Sylvain twists the sheets tighter around his hands as she traces the vein down his cock until her tongue meets her hand. Then back up, and he’s just about to say something after all when she parts her lips and slides them down over him. She doesn’t try to take him all the way in, but her mouth is tight and the flat of her tongue presses against the sweet spot just under the crown, and after a few strokes of her mouth she gets her hand involved too.

He doesn’t know what to do. It’s such a stupid thing to not know—it’s such a stupid thing to be _thinking_ about, when there’s all that wet heat and suction on his cock, and he _should_ just be thinking about how good it feels and trying not to come so it can last longer—but Mercedes is really just doing him a favor now, and it’s impossible to pretend she isn’t.

Mercedes pulls off with a soft popping sound as her mouth breaks free, leaving the air of the room cold where she had been. Sylvain blinks his eyes open in time to catch her rubbing at the hinge of her jaw. Her mouth is dark and swollen, shiny with spit and come and probably some of her own slick.

“Sorry,” he says.

She shrugs. “It’s not your fault. Am I doing something wrong?” Her voice is a little rough.

There’s no good answer to that question. “No,” Sylvain says. “You’re doing great. Do you want me to…should I talk? You didn’t like it earlier, but…”

“‘Oh,’” she says, pitching her voice low enough that even with the faint rasp it’s obviously not meant to be her own and is probably supposed to be _his_ , “‘you take me so well, baby.’”

He grimaces. “Maybe not.”

“It’s all right,” Mercedes says. Her hand is still curled loosely around his cock, and she tightens it now, setting up an easy rhythm on the shaft and working the foreskin over the crown on the upstroke.

Sylvain closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to watch her, can pretend he’s doing this himself instead of bothering her with it. “Tighter,” he says after a minute. “Right—yeah, like that, right under the crown. Twist a little— _yeah_.” She makes a thoughtful noise as she figures it out.

He is so tired, and his cock is definitely starting to ache. It’s a relief when he feels his balls tightening, the pressure gathering, the promise that soon he’s going to come and this will be over again for a while.

Mercedes says, “I’d like to try using my mouth again.”

“Yeah,” he says. He’s so close, and her mouth was so _soft_ , and he wants to sink into that softness again. “Okay.”

She does it a little differently this time, uses her tongue where he’d told her to use her fingers before, and finally, thank the Goddess, he does come, aching like he’s just been training for hours in heavy armor. By the time he gets his eyes open he doesn’t know if Mercedes swallowed it or found something to spit into, but he feels wrung-out already; there can’t have been much.

“Thank you,” he says weakly. It’s stupidly inadequate—even more so as she lies down next to him again, warm and sure, tucking her head against his shoulder because he didn’t think to get a second pillow. Or, rather, he did think to get a second pillow, but when he asked he was told that all supply requisitions went through Seteth, and he already knows what Seteth thinks about him.

“Mm,” Mercedes says, yawning. “You’re welcome.”

Sylvain should be tired too, but he still feels restless, even as her breaths steady and deepen against him. He doesn’t really…cuddle, after. Not very often, anyway. Maybe it’s the strangeness of that keeping him awake; maybe it’s the aphrodisiac.

It is, he realizes to his dismay after ten or twenty minutes of staring at his chandelier, the aphrodisiac. He’s getting hard _again_ , with Mercedes asleep on his arm and definitely done for now anyway. Well. It’s not like he doesn’t know how to jerk off. He’s got that skin-to-skin contact she mentioned. He doesn’t need to bother her at all.

The first touch of his fingers to his cock makes him flinch. There’s pleasure, sure, but there’s pain chasing it, tangled up in it. He lets go, but that doesn’t help either—his pulse throbs in his cock, low and insistent, until he’s fighting not to move and disturb Mercedes. There’s nothing to do for it, he realizes, but go for it anyway.

It hurts, and even licking the palm of his hand doesn’t help much with the drag of skin on skin, but still he can’t help thrusting into the circle of his hand, trying to get it done as quickly as possible, trying—

His breath saws in his throat, ragged and wet, and Mercedes stirs and lifts herself off of him. “ _Sylvain_ ,” she says, not sweetly at all. “What are you doing to yourself?”

“I didn’t want to wake you up,” he mutters.

“Don’t be foolish.” She tugs his hand away from his cock and winces at whatever she sees. Sylvain cranes his neck and, yeah, that’s not a good shade of red. “I’m here to help you. Here, let me…” The glow of white magic starts gathering around her hand.

Sylvain throws the arm she’d been lying on over his face—he must look awful, and she’s already giving him too much.

It doesn’t hurt when she touches his cock. It _doesn’t hurt_ , it stops hurting, it feels like diving into cool water on one of those broiling southern summer days, it washes through him in waves of relief. Sylvain bites down on his arm to keep from crying out—“It’s all right,” Mercedes says softly, “I’ve got you”—and then the heal sinks into his arm, too, and nothing hurts at all. It doesn’t even hurt when his hips arch clean off the bed and he comes again, cock dribbling weakly onto his stomach.

“You’re all right,” Mercedes says softly.

He doesn’t move his arm. It’s probably not covering his eyes any more, but he doesn’t care. He’s so tired. He’s so tired and _still_ there’s that tingling heat in his groin, a threat that this isn’t over yet. “I…Mercedes.” His voice barely even sounds like his, thick and strained. “Thank you.”

“I’m so grateful to you for trusting me to help you,” she says.

Sylvain, to his horror, thinks he might start crying. He can’t say anything for a minute. He’s going to burn every one of those flowers, medicinal or no.

Mercedes tucks herself back under his arm. “Don’t let me sleep through it while you suffer again, all right?” she asks.

“Sure,” Sylvain croaks. “I’ll wake you up.”

“I was wondering,” she says, “if you’d be willing to try something else next time.”

His voice is a little steadier as he says, “I’ll try almost anything once.”

“It’s all right if you’d rather not, but…oh, I don’t even know if you have oil in here, and there’s no way it’ll be easier on you without any.”

Sylvain feels a jolt of heat and an accompanying rush of dread at the proof that this still isn’t over. “I have some hand salve in my desk,” he says. “Mercedes, I’m surprised at you, plotting to plant a flag in the margravial ass.”

“Don’t be silly,” Mercedes says. “I didn’t bring a flag with me.”

She says it so calmly that it takes Sylvain’s weary brain a few seconds to catch up with his ears, but once it does he bursts out laughing, weak but genuine. “You’d be too late anyway.”

She hums thoughtfully. “Do you like it?”

“It’s been a while, but…yeah.” A lot of things seem simpler, in this dim-lit room with Mercedes’s easy acceptance. “Don’t go spreading that around, maybe, that one I don’t want to get back to Gautier.”

“I wouldn’t,” she says, and yeah. He knows. “Do you want to try, then? Just my fingers—that shouldn’t be too much.”

Sylvain uncovers his eyes so he can find one of her hands, and brings it to his lips to kiss her knuckles. He’s making a point, even though he kind of regrets moving—her fingers are delicate, tapering, with smooth short nails. “Sure.” It’s a good idea, a break from anyone having to touch his cock—he can’t keep asking her to use healing magic on him, especially since if he starts associating healing magic with sex he’s going to have a _very_ bad time in armor. And it has been a while. “I’ll get the salve.”

He sits up and the room swings around him. Mercedes takes him by the shoulders and pushes him gently back down. “I can get it. Which drawer?”

“Second,” he says, staring at the ceiling. Again. He should nail some paintings up there or something, give him something to focus on.

His cock is stirring again by the time she gets back, but he doesn’t move, and she doesn’t rush him. He wants to ask her something, listen to her about something, give _something_ back, but his thoughts are thick and slow as treacle. His sheets are ruined, he realizes. Whoever else has laundry when he can get there is going to be unbearable. That’s about as much as he can think, right now, and Mercedes seems content to sit quietly next to him.

Finally, when it gets to be too much to ignore, he says, “All right.”

She fits herself between his legs and strokes up the insides of his thighs, thumbs sweeping across the muscle, soft on his skin. Her hands are gentle.

“Not gonna break,” Sylvain manages, closing his eyes. “Just go ahead and…”

He hears her work the lid off the jar and then there’s another silence as the scent of herbs strengthens in the room. His cock aches, his balls, his thighs, his fucking _abs_. He’s been kicked in the groin and had it hurt less, and still he wants more. His whole body feels like it’s been twisted and wrung out, like he’s caught fire and been left to burn. His eyes are prickling. He keeps them closed, and spreads his legs wider.

“All right,” Mercedes says. One of her hands, slippery with salve, comes down on his hip. The other strokes across his hole, and pleasure shoots sparks through him. Different than before.

“You’re brilliant,” he slurs, even as his exhausted muscles twitch against the light pressure of her circling finger. “You’re so good, Mercie.” It’s not a nickname she’s ever asked him to use, but he’s heard Annette use it often enough, and her full name is so much effort.

She eases her finger in. Sylvain grits his teeth and breathes through the strangeness of it, the feeling that _should_ be easing some of the throbbing fullness of his cock and isn’t this time. “Are you all right?” she asks, not moving.

“Fine,” he says, still breathing, and then it isn’t strange at all and his words blur in his mouth again. “I’m good. Keep going.”

Mercedes fucks him carefully, working her finger in until he can feel her knuckles pressed against his ass and then crooking it, twisting a little, feeling out the shape of his body while she searches. He still doesn’t dare open his eyes, not with her doing this so gently, so carefully, for no reason at all.

“Goddess, Mercie”—he can’t, he really can’t—“Mercedes,” he makes himself say, “it’s so…”

He doesn’t have words for it, the slow spreading heat pouring out under his skin, even though she hasn’t found the spot yet, just from her hand on his hip and the stretch of his hole. She could give him a second finger, but that would be so much, when everything is already too much. His skin isn’t too tight any more; it’s gone completely, left him raw under her.

“It’s good?” she asks.

Sylvain feels a tear trickle down the side of his face, leaving an itching trail before it disappears into his hair. Please let her not notice, but she notices everything. “I think so.”

“I wish it weren’t hurting you.” She’s sounding a little breathless again, or maybe he’s just wishing she were. “I could like this.”

“Yeah?” He makes himself open his eyes and another rush of tears leaks out. Damn it all. But Mercedes is flushed and heavy-eyed, watching her hand pressed against him. Into him.

She looks up at his face and her mouth shapes into a soft O of concern. She doesn’t say anything about the tears, though, just says, “It’s…you feel good, and I’m grateful that you’re trusting me with this.”

Sylvain has to close his eyes again, but he can’t quite bite back the noise he makes in the back of his throat, or the cry a minute later when she finds the spot. White lightning rolls through his body, not a single strike but over and over. He’s babbling, some kind of nonsense—“please,” he hears himself say, “please,” and he can’t even tell if he’s begging her to stop or to keep going.

At some point in there he comes again, his whole body spasming with it. His throat is sore, and he can’t catch his breath, can’t break the sobbing rhythm of it, even once Mercedes takes her hand back. She leans over him and kisses his eyelids, his cheeks, the slack corner of his mouth. It’s gentle, but she _is_ breathing faster, her heart racing against his skin.

“Here, let me,” he says, or tries to. He sounds drunk, his muscles unstrung. When he tries to put an arm around her it doesn’t want to move.

“It’s all right,” Mercedes says.

It’s not all right, because he’s gone from taking from her to not even being able to get her off. “I think…” He has to stop for a second to let the knowledge pass through him like the shock of a wound. “I think I can go again, if you want to ride me.”

She wipes more tears off his face with the back of her hand. “Is that what you want?”

“I wanna make you feel good,” Sylvain says. Thinks he says. He doesn’t know how it’s possible to be numb and aching and burning up all at the same time. If she hadn’t promised him it wasn’t poison he’d be scared, if he had the energy to be. “Please.”

“All right.” Her hand settles warmly on his chest, salve smearing across his skin, and then there’s another of those blessed waves of healing magic, blunting the worst of the pain. He doesn’t know if it’s the magic or just the peace, but just as he’d feared his cock fills again. “You’re being so brave,” Mercedes whispers as she moves to straddle him. “I know it hurts, and I’m so sorry about that.”

She takes her hand away from his chest to guide him into her. He sobs at the feel of her cunt, more heat and more pressure and more pleasure and _more_ , but it’s bearable. It’s good, even though he’s drowning in it.

He doesn’t even want to think about where he’d be without her healing, right now.

“Just lie there,” Mercedes says, thighs flexing against his hips as she starts to move. “I’ll take care of everything.”

He wishes she would touch him again, but she doesn’t. When he opens his eyes she’s stroking herself with one hand and the other, the one she’d had in his ass, is clenched in the sheets at her side. It makes sense, but he wishes—he wishes. He can’t even appreciate the sway of her breasts any more.

He closes his eyes when his vision blurs with more tears. Pleasure gathers slowly, wrenched out of him, building as her cunt tightens around him, rhythmic and urgent until she goes limp above him, swaying forward for just a moment before she catches herself. He moans, protest or passion he can’t even tell, and she makes a wordless noise of reassurance. After a moment she starts moving again, faster this time, and Sylvain prays he comes soon.

It’s like being broken open when he finally does, something that leaves him cracked and shuddering and sobbing.

“It’s all right,” Mercedes whispers, pulling him into her arms and stroking his hair. “You’re all right.”

“Th-thank you,” he chokes out. She’s so soft. The motion of her hand against his scalp is so soothing, a gentle undemanding motion. “Thank you.”

He means to say more, but between one word and the next he finally, mercifully, falls asleep, safe at her side.

**Author's Note:**

>   * I called it a “breastband” to try to minimize [the Tiffany problem](https://medium.com/swlh/the-tiffany-problem-when-history-makes-no-sense-703b86522627), but Mercedes is absolutely wearing [something we’d consider a bra](https://news.yahoo.com/600-old-linen-bras-found-austrian-castle-192408678.html). Don’t ask me how ye olde medieval underpants work, though.
>   * *waves hands loudly* something about oxytocin interacting with the sex pollen so it wears off more quickly/has less strong effects, I don’t know, I’m not a biochemist
>   * Dimitri, on the other side of a wooden wall: Ah, if only Felix didn’t hate me and I could just bring my pillow and extra blanket right next door… I cannot spend the night in Ingrid’s room; that would be most improper… Dedue is all the way down _both_ halls of the dorm… *pulls pillow over head, prays for oblivion*
> 



End file.
